Aslan Gaisumov
ALL THAT YOU SEE HERE, FORGET
Emalin Gallery
Unit 4 Huntingdon Estate Bethnal Green Rd
London E1 6JU
14 March –28 April 2018
Emalin is pleased to present All That You See Here, Forget, Aslan Gaisumov’s first exhibition at the gallery, curated by Anna Smolak. This is the artist’s first solo project in the UK and will debut a new video work, Keicheyuhea, produced with support by the Han Nefkens Foundation, Barcelona. As part of a video installation, Keicheyuhea enters into dialogue with People of No Consequence (2016), produced by M HKA Museum of Contemporary Art Antwerp.
All That You See Here, Forget is a reflection on the burden of memory, the need to bear witness and the challenges of communicating the unspeakable catastrophes of history. Comprising of two video works – Keicheyuhea (2017) and People of No Consequence (2016) – on either sides of a shared screen, Gaisumov’s presentation is set against the backdrop of February 1944: a time still largely unacknowledged in official historical accounts when, by Stalin’s decree, the entire Chechen and Ingush nations were violently exiled from their homelands and resettled in Central Asia.
Keicheyuhea follows the artist’s grandmother, Zayanu Khasueva, as she returns to her home village for the first time since her family’s deportation 73 years earlier. Keicheyuhea, a remote mountain settlement in the Galanchozh region of Chechnya, remained a closed territory under Soviet rule and has only recently become accessible to its former residents. In the artist’s first multi-shot video, the voice of Zayana Khasueva accompanies the arduous journey into the mountains.
The single-shot video People of No Consequence documents the recent gathering of survivors of the mass expulsions. Occasioned by the artist as the first meeting of its kind, 119 of the more than 300 surviving witnesses Gaisumov met with come together in a municipal hall in Grozny.
Aslan Gaisumov (b. 1991) lives and works in Grozny, Chechnya. He graduated from the Institute of Contemporary Art ICA (Moscow, 2012) and and Higher Institute for Fine Arts HISK (Gent, 2017). Selected solo exhibitions include People of No Consequence, M HKA Museum of Contemporary Art Antwerp (Antwerp, BE. 2016); Memory Belongs to
the Stones, Zink Gallery (Berlin, DE. 2015); and Untitled (War), Vinzavod Center of Contemporary Art (Moscow, RU. 2011). He has participated in numerous group exhibitions, notably Power Nap, Museum of Modern Art (Yerevan, AM. 2018); I Am a Native Foreigner, Stedelijk Museum (Amsterdam, NL. 2017); Uncertain States, Akademie der Künste (Berlin, DE. 2016); Lines of Tangency, MSK Museum of Fine Arts, Ghent (Ghent, BE. 2015). Upcoming projects include presentations at the Liverpool Biennial (Liverpool, UK. 2018) and Antoni Tàpies Foundation (Barcelona, ES. 2018).
